An intricate deepfake posing as his boss fooled a finance worker in Hong Kong into giving scammers £20 million of his company’s funds.
The worker entered a video conference with someone he believed to be the company’s CFO.
He was initially suspicious after a message from the CFO mentioned a ‘secret transaction’, suggesting it was a phishing scam.
After joining the call he remained unsure, with the CFO apparently appearing to be ‘a little off’.
However, after other colleagues dialled in and supported the move, the staffer agreed to make 15 transfers into five local bank accounts.
In a chilling glimpse of the future, it later transpired not only was the boss a deepfake, but so was everyone else on the call.
‘[In the] multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone [he saw] was fake,’ said Senior Superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching, speaking to the city’s public broadcaster RTHK.
The scam was discovered when the worker checked with the company’s head office later. Neither the name of the employee nor the company has been revealed.
It appears all of the AI-generated videos were created using past online conferences, while the fraudsters also used WhatsApp and email to make the scam even more credible.
‘I believe the fraudster downloaded videos in advance and then used artificial intelligence to add fake voices to use in the video conference,’ said Senior Superintendent Chan.
The case is just the latest in a string of high-profile deepfake video and call scams.
On Friday, the Hong Kong police announced they had made six arrests in relation to similar frauds.
Last month, voters in the US appeared to receive a recorded phone call from President Joe Biden telling people not to vote in the New Hampshire primary election, but the voice was also an AI-generated deepfake.
Around the same time, explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift began circulating the internet, just months after young girls in a Spanish town were targeted and deepfake naked images of them circulated online.
And last year, a mum fell victim to a phone scam after she received a call from an AI voice clone of her daughter, saying she had been kidnapped.
